Adolescents' Relationships With Parents

Abstract

Adolescents' relationships with parents are examined in this article. The perspective taken here is in terms of communication negotiations centering around three main dialectical forces at work in the parent-adolescent relationship. These forces are autonomy versus connection, privacy versus open boundaries, and an interindividual versus intergroup dimension. It is suggested that conceptualizing parent-adolescent communication as dynamic and processual across the short and long term may be more useful than focusing on the parent-as-agent or issuing recipes for successful communication with adolescents.